


Imperium

by SlowEvolution



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Hulk Sex, Incestous feelings, M/M, Rape, Size Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:30:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowEvolution/pseuds/SlowEvolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There's a whisper in the back of his mind that this slick place between his thighs belongs to the one who made it manifest.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Loki is undone, and what follows transforms the human, the Beast, and the God of Lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [s_alt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_alt/gifts).



> Based initially on a NorseKink Prompt :
> 
> _I am craving Loki forcibly pinned down and split open with a cock that should destroy him. Instead it is somehow squeezing in as his body accepts it after the violent and forceful fight and pinning process has worn him out and loosened him up through hard wired biological signals._
> 
>  
> 
> _Don't really care how it happens, but I want Loki to have his wrists pinned, his pants torn open/off and to be made to scream as he is breached all the way into the entrance of his womb. (Or so that the bulge of the cock/fist/toy can be felt from a hand pressed against his flat stomach, whichever.) I really want it described in detail. I want to explore size kink to the limits here- what feels like bursting bands inside- the pain that is tinged with pleasure- the rush of endorphins. No permanent damage please, but have fun._
> 
>  
> 
> _I would love to see this be Hulk/Loki or Jotun/Loki._
> 
>  
> 
> This is s_alt's baby. All thanks go to her. She's more than a Beta and there wouldn't be a story here if it weren't for her patience, understanding, and dedication.
> 
>  **S_alt here:** noting that the only thing I authored is the Bruce bit in Chapter 3. This was slowevolution's idea, and she/he wrote the bulk of what you see.

 

It is an easy surrender for Loki after the Hulk has made a rag doll of him. He doesn't fight the manacles that encircle his wrists or struggle against the muzzle they clamp over his mouth. There is no room in him for the concerns of pride or revenge. There exists in him only a confusion so deep that he discovers corners of himself previously unknown. There is an uncomfortable _slickness_ between his thighs, making his leathers stick to his skin and shaming him into quiescence as he's escorted into the middle of the city for the return to Asgard.  
  
If Thor spends time on farewells from his comrades, Loki doesn't know it. There builds in him a warmth that threatens to burn hotter, until the bones of his spine are useless, until his legs no longer hold him up. Deep in his stomach is a clenching sensation, a hunger for something that he can not name. Eyes trained on his brother he takes hold of the handle on the cube's container. A trip just now will suit him fine. This will be no Bifrost jump between the realms. He'll have the time he needs to suss out his body's secrets. For how can he be a master of all other things if he can not even master construct of his own body?  
  
Already there's an inkling whisper-quiet in the back of his mind that this is some trick of his newly discovered parentage. Jotun biology. It is distasteful to think upon and leaves a sour taste behind his teeth.  
  
Thor must be tasting something foul himself, judging by the face he wears as they stalk to the court of his father’s hall.  
  
Loki revels in the distaste that his not-brother has for his bindings. He grins ear to ear when Thor breaks them off of him like so much parchment from a book. Still, grateful though he may be to have the use of his tongue restored to him, there simply isn't the time for a grand old family reunion.  
  
He doesn't hesitate to tell Odin as much.  
  
" Another time _Allfather_. I fear I have left much unattended to which I must now return. "  
  
Loki gives the gathered royals the courtesy of a deep bow before bending light around himself and disappearing from their gaze. It's back to his secret rifts, the paths between worlds and realms that he so often traveled behind the Gatekeeper's watch. The journey to Earth is an easy one. He arrives unseen and unheard, casting not even a reflection of himself on all those shiny surfaces in Dr. Banner's laboratory. Oh but he does wish to preen, vanity prickling at him in the back of his mind even if he can decipher no cause for it yet.  
  
A beast making play he is still a man. He recalls now his assessment of the fractured scientist who lives in permanent anger and frustration. He revisits that thought now, though he feels the knife-twist in his cold broken heart to study their similarities. Like to like. The frost giant making play he was worthy of Asgard's throne; of the Allfather's love.. of Thor.  
  
"Has Fury changed his mind about my room?"  
  
Loki watches the object of his curiosity interact with the lady assassin called a Widow, picking apart the threads of their conversation for everything that they're not saying.The art of trading information isn't done with words alone. Most often, words are the cover for the actual exchange. He's always found the language of a person's body to be more honest than what comes from their lips. Green eyes take in the Widow's attempt to act as if there is no secret part of her that still trembles to be so near this man-beast in whose berserker path she was so recently caught; and watch as said man fumbles to keep his eyes everywhere but on the woman and her shape.  
  
"No. You wanna be in the wind, then you're in the wind. Fury just wants you to think about it."  
  
"Think about it in a cage?"  
  
The assassin reaches the limits of her patience almost too easily and Loki wonders if it's a part of her game, or if she's truly satisfied with her attempt. Curiosity about her however is only a small part of what's on his mind. The Widow can be studied another time. He's more interested in keeping pace with the all but running scientist who stumbles in shock when no one detains him outside. Giddily Loki wonders where _they_ might be off to now.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail s_alt and her encouragement and endless work on this fic.

Banner settles in southern Peru, if renting a hovel and working as an under-the-tables janitor at a local clinic can be called settling. Director Fury and SHIELD might have left his pockets a little more filled than they had been in his three years on the run, but the job gives him a sense of timing. Besides, anything SHIELD has given him can be tracked and he just wants to disappear. He counts his days in floors mopped and dialysis machines wiped down. His Spanish is rusty, but it serves him well enough for his day-to-day needs, poorly conjugated verbs coming together to offer his meager services as a not-quite doctor. His PhD. is in nuclear physics and not medicine, but it doesn't take four years of med school to help the poor with afflictions long since cured in the United States. He's really little more than a pill pusher, but it gives him a sense of purpose and the will to keep getting out of his too thin bed in the mornings.  
  
He misses India. Here, too close to home, there are too many groups encroaching on his territory. It's a developing nation. UNICEF and Children's Aid are out in full force, pushing the same cures, providing the same help. It leaves him a few too many quiet evenings free with his own mind. And New York is still fresh in his memory, only two months gone since massive destruction and mayhem and death. He doesn't even know that he understands why it all happened; though his own situation with the other guy has left him something of a makeshift psychologist, he knows that there's no self-help book or chanted mantra that would have stopped Loki's madness. He hadn’t even wanted to bother with him.  
  
He tries not to think that he knows what it's like to want to cause city-leveling bouts of destruction because you've lost someone. Primarily, yourself.  
  
Though he has enough control over his raw nerve not to worry about an incident, thinking of Loki still wrecks his calm enough to make him banish the thoughts. He rolls over on his worn-out mattress and misses the comfort of pajamas. The locals think he never sleeps since he'll open his door no matter the unholy hour of the morning, always in a crumpled suit with too big pants that would fall off if not for the belt cinched tight at his waist.  
  
He wishes for just such a visit now, if only so he could busy his mind with something other than his own bitterly pitiful situation; but with no sick, coughing, fevered child on his doorstep he has to make due with long-practiced fantasy. No masturbatory thoughts of Betty will do tonight, the hours ahead of him until sun-up and work and mops and janitor Bruce too long and too many to be whiled away with a hand shoved down the front of his pants. He spends absolutely no time thinking that he finally has enough control over his breathing and heart rate to make love to Betty but will probably never get that chance again, no stolen moment in a quiet motel room where the world has faded away until it's just the two of them.  
  
Tonight it's a different fantasy entirely.

  
When he isn't referring to the Hulk as _the other guy_ , the rage monster within him becomes his _party trick_. Scraps of a fantasy that bled through into his real life for just a moment there on Nick Fury's helicarrier. He blames Tony fondly; glad to have spent that time with someone so unafraid of him. All that cockiness and bravado had been just a tiny bit contagious. Later Tony had said to him that whatever party the Hulk was a trick at was a party he wanted to go to. No one had made Bruce laugh like that since Betty.  
  
Eyes closed tight he builds the dream up for himself, filling it with the rich detail of the colors and sounds of a college campus life.He is well practiced in this, the dreaming by now a familiar comfort. He sees himself younger, no hints of grey in his hair, and happier. And he knows now in bitter old age why it was ever said that ignorance was bliss. Here, this time, he's done it all differently. The opposite of his life. He's a frat boy football star, drinking his genius away happily, trading the possibility of a scientist's life with government grants and world-changing discoveries for _in the moment_ popularity and a score of cheerleaders phone numbers. The Hulk is there too; no more a horrific accident born of experimenting with gamma radiation, instead simply a stupid nickname for his drunk alter ago. He'd be one of those beer can crushing legends in college, beating his brain up with football by day and drowning it in kegs of cheap beer by night. Bruce _the party animal_ Banner.  
  
Guilt will occasionally stick Betty in there somewhere, the opposite of who she used to be too, but he always manages to morph her face away into some random stranger. He thinks Betty would hate this. Oh, she might have donned a college cheerleader's uniform in the bedroom for him, for their secret pleasure, because she was adventurous like that but she also would never have spoken to him again if he really wished away his passion for science, trying instead to be someone he wasn't.  
  
Bruce quickly startles to the realization that the fantasy isn't working tonight. No matter the distance he's put between himself and New York his thoughts are still too close to the home that it almost was. Betty is everywhere; her hurt looks and accusatory glares painted over a hundred faces surrounding him. He hadn't even dared to dream of contacting her, and now she haunts him.  
  
But fantasy has become lucid dream now, his eyes drifting in REM patterns as his breath evens out in sleep, and he is no longer the only audience to the workings of his imagination.

* * *

Loki enjoys the little third world south american country that they land in; _the doctor and he_ , even if the previous has no knowledge of his invisible tag-along companion. The beauty of poverty-stricken places, Loki thinks, is that the people in them have little time for leisure. This affords him great privacy in all his adventures and endeavors. A people concerned with finding work and their next meal just can't be bothered with the stranger in their midst, labeling him a tourist in their ever-busy minds and going about their business starving and dying and orphaning small hordes of starving and dying children. That, of course, being the appeal for the cursed scientist in their village. Banner spends his days and even the better part of his nights tending to endless cases of malaria, lymphatic filariasis, and leishmaniasis. He doles out pills paid for by the recompense of his short stint with the avenging heroes of New York and SHIELD. Endless charity for a dream of redemption, another killer looking to wipe out the red in his ledger.  
  
Loki, on the other hand, whiles away the hours of too-hot days in the hidden ruins forgotten to the locals for countless generations now. He knows that they are an archaeologist's dream waiting for discovery, but for him these remnants of a long dead civilization are little more than a hideout as he stalks his prey. Scholar he may be, but there's little interest in him for the knowledge of ancient indians and their sun-worshipping ways. What he seeks to learn can only be found in himself; privacy is all that the wrecked stone walls afford him. The humid climate of the region encourages lush greenery that helps add to the veil of secrecy covering the once houses of worship. These dilapidated edifices of massive stone are fed by healthy streams that he follows and loses himself in, sitting for hours beneath thundering waterfalls until he can take the stillness no more and wanders back to his coming-together lair in one corner of the ruins of the Inca people.  
  
At night he sheds his daytime attire of a linen tunic and hide pants, laying himself on the slowly cooling slabs of rock that may have once been altars. They feel a fitting place for his self-explorations, and he only distantly wonders if he isn't disrespecting some other unknown deity with his carnal needs. He doesn't know much of the tribes people that once inhabited this place. He doesn't know if they were a hedonistic people who would have encouraged his actions, or if they were more the virtuous sort prizing maiden-heads and first bloods above all else. He reminds himself that he doesn't care. His thoughts are filled with played back memories of his sunny afternoon defeat some months ago and of the giant’s hands that dealt his end. Thoughts of the Hulk send a shudder through him, and he encourages the feeling along with his own fingers teasing along the slit in his flesh that is a recent addition to his body.  
  
There's a whisper in the back of his mind that this slick place between his thighs belongs to the one who made it manifest.  
  
He loathes that whisper in equal measure to the pleasure it brings him; he's fighting a losing war between mind and body. Never has he been such a slave to the latter, never a seeker of indulgences only skin-deep. Oh, but these feelings are something else entirely.  
  
When he can bear no more of his own ministrations, he calls on the scientist that he's stalking. Occasionally he is a literal fly on the wall of the humble man's dwelling. More often than not, he's just an invisible shade of himself; no substance, simply a projection of his sorcerer mind. He watches as sick men and women parade through Banner's home, and knows that there's nothing wrong with them that doesn't already have a solution. The knowledge stirs in him a deep resentment of Thor, supposed protector of the realm, and where is he exactly as hordes of people die from curable sickness and endable hunger and poverty? Such are the ways of his brother; neither will he rule a people justly, nor let another do it well. But Thor is Thor, and Thor is anywhere but here, most likely still red-faced somewhere over his brother's clever escape.  
  
Wherever he may drown his sorrows; Thor is not the only red-faced one tonight.  
  
There's a maniacal grin that paints itself over his fine-boned features as that whisper at the back of his mind comes alive again; just what might it be that unsettles the usually stoic Banner tonight? Even without use of his telepathy it's easy to decipher embarrassment. Something else too, that which makes the scientist wriggle beneath his sheets, discomfort restrained, keeping him from fully tossing and turning, and Loki can't help but wonder just what it is exactly that Banner tortures himself with even in sleep.  
  
It takes but a moment for his body to catch up to his projection, dispelling it altogether as he takes its place in the too-hot room. He does just enough to ward off unwanted interruption before slipping his mind into the other man's dream. At first, he is invisible there too. He is no more than an added spectator, curiosity urging him to watch. What he finds startles him then, the dream not being anything he'd imagined, and how he'd imagined far and wide, and he's slowly developing an appreciation for Banner's continuing ability to surprise him, defying all predictions. It's like a salve to the chaos god's still stinging sense of pride. Perhaps all is not continued ruination for him.  
  
Being an experienced dream-walker, he knows that he'll have only a moment, maybe two, more to enjoy this; all too soon Banner will wake himself from this landscape where he walks amongst a hundred people, men and women all different in body but with the same woman's face painted over their own.  
  
Loki leaves behind the notion of only watching, and takes action. Now he is a woman, but not the woman that Banner tortures himself with. There's no reproach in his looks to the other man; only a smile, a hint of interest across the eyes as she weaves her way through the slowly returning to normal crowd. He knows that his use of Midgardian vernacular is antiquated and would end this all too soon, but his attention is already too divided to focus on rectifying it. So he settles for something a little more universal, the silent bite of her own lip and a glimpse at the side of her neck.  
  
It works. Their surroundings morph from the open air of wherever they were before, to a spartan room draped in pendants and newspaper clippings. The focus is of course on the bed in the midst of the disarray of clothing, shoes, and what seems like some sort of armor on the floor. Her lingering gaze upon it makes a feral grin light up Banner's face, and in the moment that follows she finds herself tossed up over a broad shoulder _(and where does it come from, he wonders? He's been a shape-shifter for as long as he can remember, but he doesn't think Banner shares this talent outside of the transformations into the Hulk.)_ and carried off not to the bed, but to the wall most covered in apparent achievements. Pictures of this younger dream-Banner, bulked up in the strange armor and uniform.. ah, sport. Loki is only too familiar with this dream now, though he has not dreamed it himself in millenia. Oh but there had been such a time when he would have given away all his intellect for but a fraction of his brother's or father's brawn.  
  
She runs fine-fingered hands over the sculpted muscles of her companion’s arms and circles her legs around his waist. In this there is no shame. No, this may even prove to be a wonderful handle on Banner, this mortal who surprises him again and again, who has wrought in him such longing and despair, stirring his madness to greater heights. She fills his room with the sounds of laughter and passion, giving her body over to his overly tender ministrations until the desire for something rougher puts her in charge. She gives Banner a rough shove to the floor so she can sit astride him and rake her painted nails over the skin of his chest, the muscles of his abdomen, mixing in pain with their pleasure.  
  
Banner takes it like a penitent sinner at prayer, and Loki cannot help the delighted grin that bleeds on to his dream-walking face.  
  
Similar is not equal, and this little ant beneath him with his intellect-over-brawn complex is nothing like him. Banner nears the end of his lifespan and has but dreamt of what he could and could not be. Loki does not have to divine the secrets of the man's mind to know that he is tortured by one woman's countenance alone because it is all he's ever allowed himself. He is nothing like Loki, who in youth threw himself with unholy dedication at everything Thor did. And if his body did not rip muscle and mend and grow as his once-brother's did, still it was put through the gauntlet of the training ring, still he fought every challenge that came his way and fought it until he won. And if Thor had women, Loki had men and women, elves and gods an endless parade of lovers that he learned from until they had nothing left to teach and he left them behind in search of newer pleasures.  
  
It is that fount of knowledge he relies on now, calling it up like old memory as he plays Banner's body like an instrument or favorite toy wrought of flesh and bone and dreaming wishes.  
  
First locking eyes with his prey, she gets from astride him and holds his gaze; all the while, she ever-so-slowly lowers full lips to the crown of his manhood. _Tease_ , Banner's eyes accuse, and she can't help but respond with a lick of her lips before finally swallowing him down. Loki actually has to make an effort to hide the pity from his dream-face when Banner's eyes widen at the simple tricks up her sleeve. Only man can ever hold himself so high as to want to take apart the universe with stuttering magics called _science_ and all the while never suss out the secrets of his own body.  
  
She is relentless with her questing fingers, plying the young athlete's body into giving her entrance. It is a dream. Loki skips the niceties and necessities of oil or slick; in this realm logic is not law. Instead he busies her fingers in the depths of Banner's body, seeking and finding and teasing that bundle of nerve endings that make him tremble just so. Banner's nearing orgasm tastes of sweet triumph though he does not care to examine why. This is just a game, a lark, a little bit of fun to hold over the other man's head later on; how eager he was to put someone else in control.  
  
It's that control that she abuses now, grazing teeth over the sensitive erection she holds in her mouth. Loki's not nearly ready for it to be over and he cools Banner's mounting need with a smirk. She evades the need to speak by pressing her mouth to his, tangling their tongues as she pulls her hand from between his legs. Poison-colored eyes do her talking for her as she pulls away entirely. Enough. What she wants now surely Banner knows how to do. Still she makes the invitation as plain as a person can.  
  
Perched on the very edge of his bed, she splays her legs wide and leans back just far enough to support herself on one hand whilst the other dips into the wet flesh of her cunt. Banner is a man drowning on dry land as he watches, and Loki wonders if he's not putting on too good of a show if it has made the other forget the use of his legs. It feels like an eternity that she suffers only her own ministrations, her own long fingers spreading her open in anticipation, that she startles when Banner is suddenly there on his knees, face only inches from her fingers. Cockily, she swipes those fingers over his lips and thrills at the shiny streak they leave behind.

* * *

  
  
Bruce fixes his eyes on the ceiling of his dorm room as he's introduced to his own prostate. _(This is not what his room looked like.)_ He tells himself the shiver that runs down his spine is all pleasure, but it's followed by a clench in his gut that is just the opposite. It's all very American Pie and Road Trip. Living out these fantasies is losing its appeal quickly. He knows he's dreaming and still he can't appreciate whatever half-buried memory his subconscious has dug up on football players and their kinky groupies. Stimulation remains just that, however, and he's grateful for the release that he feels building up from it all, hips rocking of their own accord with the rhythm of his nameless girlfriend. _(He doesn’t even remember her from college.)_ She pulls him back from the edge and kisses him so that he can taste himself on her tongue. It isn't horrible and he doesn't turn his head away even if he turns his thoughts to Betty and how she'd bury her face in his neck so that he wouldn't have to taste his own flesh and sweat and precum.  
  
At least her fingers are out of him now.  
  
He watches as she moves about his room, settling on his bed and working on her own pleasure. The sight of it brings him back around, and the noises from her lips pick up the pace of his heart in a very good way. He never bothers teasing himself with pornography, dangling what he can't have in front of himself, but he appreciates the show. Like any man he's wondered over the nuances of pleasuring a woman. He always wanted to do right by.. _no_.. now is not the time to think of her, even if he can't help it as he goes to his knees before his actual companion. There's a wrongness in his compulsion to do for her what he could never bring himself to do for Betty. He'd wanted to.. thought about it and made half-assed attempts, kissing trails down her body to her navel before losing the courage. She'd never pushed. She'd never worn the look of malice that he sees flash over green eyes either as the tart juices of her desire are painted across his mouth. He knows, knows, that this would be doing it for any other man. It's what he should want, what he should be taking here in this place where he can as opposed to his waking life where he is touched almost never-  
  
 _Green_. He's so tired of the color. It puts an ache in his head and he can't bring himself to finish what he's started. His heart rate goes from excitement to something else entirely and he can feel himself start to shake. No. This isn't supposed to happen here. The Hulk is just one beer too many, an excuse for the stupidities of youth. Bruce looks to - _why doesn't she have a name?_ It doesn't matter. The smirk on her face just makes it all worse. _He does know her._ Does she know him then? Does she know to run? He wants to warn her but the words die in his throat as realization takes over and becomes full-blown catalyst.  
  
It's too late. He damns the mad god to hell even as he wakes to the feel of his body breaking and transforming, giving way to the Hulk as he falls into blackness.

* * *

  
  
What is waking for Banner is only a side-step for Loki, out of the dream and back into Banner's humble abode, and then right back out of it. Curiosity is not powerful enough to keep him there as the beast emerges. He's not ready for another beating at its hands. Damn the man's skittishness. Roar at his back, Loki propels himself through the night time streets towards the sanctuary of the nearby jungle. Studies of the beast indicate he'll only chase so far, look so much, before his need for solitude takes over. He's counting on this as he casts doubles to either side of himself for added insurance and sends each off in a different direction.  
  
Escape is no easy feat, and it's a nuisance to run over terrain that jumps and breaks in its destruction at the Hulk's massive hands. Like a blow from Mjolnir landing upon the earth, so too the beasts fist send shockwaves through the ground that make it give way beneath his running strides. Loki's only advantage comes from having fought alongside Thor for centuries; Thor who could never be bothered to spare a glance at his comrades, who swung his war hammer and summoned his lightning with little care for those who did battle with him instead of against. Long practiced grace lets him leap over jagged rock as it bursts from the earth, he propels himself over new-forming rifts and rides the current of sliding dirt as this terrain is broken and reformed and still the distance between himself and the raging berserker at his back never grows, his own speed and long legged strides being a poor match for the giant's incredible leaps.  
  
A growing dampness where he resents it most fumbles his stride, and in a moment of carelessness he falls, tumbling along with the landslide that rages on with the Hulk’s roared encouragement. The harshness of the fall breaks his concentration, dispelling his shadows and leaving him alone in the now-scarred jungle. There's blood in his eyes from a cut above his brow; it prompts him to summon his armor from the non-space his magic keeps it in. The glints of gold might work against him in the dark night, giving away his position, but he rather the protection of it at the moment.  
  
Protection is the last thing it offers him when he's snatched mid-leap a minute later and flung into the rocky face of a nearby mountain. The feel of his bones cracking beneath the plates of his dress fill him with a rage that makes him scream. It emerges past the dirt and gravel in his mouth as a warbled yell that the beast pays no heed to; there's only the continuing beating, the ridiculous grip on his calf that makes it feel as though that part of his leg will be severed and all the while a slow building throb that only stirs his hate to greater heights even as it tries to flame submission in him. He will not be ruled so easily. Borrowing from the jungle mountain they're on, he strikes back, letting the magic within him change his shape to that of a giant snake. Viciously he sinks elongated fangs into the very hand that grips him and thrills in the startled roar that it brings.  
  
Escape is suddenly his when the Hulk looses his grip and looks to his injury. From giant snake to soaring hawk he changes, relishing the freedom of flight and the reprieve it grants him from torture. Victorious, he gives a hawk's shriek as he climbs higher into the sky. In his fall through the void, he'd seen the history of himself and his not-family. It had played before him amongst dying stars, the only witnesses to his descent, every ragnarok and the following rebirth. Across endless cycles he'd been known as more than silver-tongue or lie-smith. He was sky-walker too, and though the memories are not his truly, he knows why.  
  
Luck, his bad luck at least, is as unbreakable as the twilight of the gods itself. His victory is short-lived and incomplete. If there is a thing among the nine realms that can hurt the beast for longer than the minute it takes for his rage to escalate and thereby increase his strength, he doesn’t know it yet. As a hawk he is dwarfed by the giant’s hands, veritably swallowed up into a cage of the Hulk’s fingers, and all he can think is how did he find me? He wants to take the giant apart, dissect him down to his cells, his bare components, play in his blood and in the gory mess he’d make of him and seek that which no human can even see; a soul.  
  
“ _ARE YOU PART DOG?!_ “ He is a man again, raging in equal measure to the monster that holds him in a clenched fist.His screamed accusation is enough to get the other’s attention and pause his upcoming thrashing for a moment. “ Is what why you awoke? Your lesser half not know what to do in that situation? It _is_ much different for houn-”  
  
Another crater is made to mar the jungle mountains that they wage their war games on. He lies at the bottom of it trying to breathe past the pain of his crushed-feeling sternum and thinks on Thor.  
  
Thor, his brother. Thor: protector of Earth. Thor who may yet appear in a crack of lightning, dripping in Odin’s dark magic, spouting brotherly sentiment and redemption as he wields Mjolnir to his defense. He may even listen this time.  
  
The giant is speaking. Shouting most likely. He knows it by the spittle that lands on his face, and he realizes that the Hulk is crouched down close to him, their faces almost touching. He watches the beast’s words form on his lips, but he has no idea what they are. Funny, there is no ringing in his ears that should drown out what are likely shouts loud enough for several villages to hear. There’s only a sound like rushing water, great falls spewing an enormous current from great heights.  
  
When brutish hands rip away his layers of armor and leather and bare him neck to navel there is a feeling unknown to him... _Peace_.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to take a moment and thank all of you lovely readers that have given this story such fantastic attention. I appreciate every last comment and kudos. It's all horribly inspiring.
> 
> Also. This chapter, just as previous ones but even more so, would not have been possible without the endless work of [s_alt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/s_alt/profile). She is an amazing Beta, hand-holder, and co-conspirator. Please give her a round of applause.

Loki emerges from the depths of his mind to a differently colored night sky; his view of it interrupted by the grimacing face above him...also differently shaded. Sharpening colors are but a passing thought when the sudden blunt pain strikes. It brings from him a gasp, and he struggles to get up, hands braced on the ridiculously proportioned arms that hold him down, but there is nowhere to go. He is surrounded by Banner’s raging beast, trapped beneath it and held tight to the unforgiving ground that it crushed him into.  
  
A moment more, and there is no reason to fight it any longer. There is only a wail that is pitiful to his own ears as the hurt deepens and spreads. Tears sting his eyes with the burn of ripped flesh made to bleed, and he thinks he can almost hear the tearing of his skin. He certainly feels the warm trickle of blood that is displaced as he is filled with unyielding flesh that ruins him.  
  
“ _Beast._ “ He accuses, but he doesn’t even know where it is directed. Turning his face from the sight of his own violation, he finally catches sight of his hands, and his stomach roils at the sickening blue shade of them and their raised scarring. Where else could he belong, but joined to this mindless abomination that ruts into him? He is no better, no matter his delusions of grandeur and divinity.  
  
From the depths of his body there comes a sudden chill that spreads and tries to numb his pain, but it does little against the feeling of his own displaced bones grinding against each other as he is forced to take a width he was not built for.  
  
 _Small for a giant’s offspring_ , he recalls bitterly, and loathes both his lying father and himself all the more. He cannot even do this right. He is just frost giant enough to be colored like a starless sky and go into whatever animal heat it was that brought this on, unmanning him and reducing him to an abomination’s spend-rag.  
  
He wishes it over with, and never knows that it has not yet truly begun.  


* * *

  
  
It begins in that too-bright place that Bruce goes to when the world needs neither of them. Sometimes Betty is there. Most times, Bruce makes her go away. She’s there today though. Too many of her. All of them angry, and he’s never known her to be so. His memory of her is of a small soft woman who touched him gently and didn’t run from him.  
  
Then there is...Not-Betty. She makes them all go away and Hulk is relieved even if just for a moment. He doesn’t like Angry Betty.  
  
He doesn’t like Not-Betty either. She hurts Bruce. She laughs, and Hulk remembers what Bruce remembers; that the sound is not always happy. She makes other sounds too. Of these, he has no recollection of his own. Only little bits that Bruce safely guards.  
  
He watches and feels his need to be alone rise. Why won’t Bruce understand? Alone is better.  
  
Bruce thinks of his father, so Hulk does too. The man is not in the room, but he is with Bruce when Not-Betty touches him between the legs. Anger escalates. Not fun, not what Bruce does when he comes to this place. Bruce wants fun. Bruce wants no Hulk and no labs and laughing and...not this.  
  
There is a bitter taste then for Bruce, and for Hulk too. And then there is no more. No more, because Bruce wants no more and Hulk wants no more, and he pushes past the barrier of his tiny human who fights him. He always fights. That is what Bruce does, but this is what Hulk does.  
  
Smash.  
  
Not-Betty is a puny god. Bad green eyes and pain for everyone, but he is not so strong. Hulk is stronger. And faster. And not so dumb as people think. He doesn’t chase the shadows of the puny god. The real one smells of the bitter taste painted on Bruce’s mouth. That’s the one he chases, with little care that Bruce’s pants don’t make the journey with him. He is more free this way. Better this way.  
  
Catch Loki this way. “- _It is different for houn_ -” Always talking. Always yelling and hurting and wrong. But Hulk makes him quiet. Smashing, again and again, until no more talking.  
  
“NOT DOG.“ He is nothing so small and helpless, so dependent on the love and care of others. He is something greater. Greater than the people of Bruce’s world, where they are all built so small, breakable. Only he among them cannot be hurt, though they try. No dog could compare to his power.  
  
Power is an exhausting thing though. His breath comes in huge pants, all tinged with the smell of Loki lying in his crater.  
  
Loki is not power. Loki is a man with an army. One man pointing many men to die for him. Hulk knows men like him. Army men with their false power. Fire and metal. Their power is on the outside. Not like Hulk. Hulk’s power comes from the inside to the outside, rushing blood and breaking muscle that grows with his rage.  
  
He grows now, before the felled torturer. There, in the same place where Bruce was hurt, Hulk has power. Flesh fills out, just as his arms and legs do when he needs them, and he doesn’t spend much time thinking about the use of this new muscle. It is there, and it is his, and it responds to his rage for the fallen one.  
  
A distinct impression nudges at the back of his mind, calling for a host of things, not the least of which is revenge, repayment of hurt for hurt and shame for shame. He listens to instinct and makes them more equal, Loki and he; easy to rip away fancy clothing and silly metal pieces. Beneath it all they are more the same; flesh and bone and no other hiding.  
  
But he is wrong. Loki is something else. Where Hulk is power and pulsing muscle, Loki is too, but more. Loki is wetness and scent and hollow with a place that needs filling. It puts a grin on his face, an expression he doesn’t normally wear. So the puny god needs what the Hulk has? Then they are both beasts alike.  
  
Loki fits easily in one hand, and doesn’t put up a fight when he is crushed down and held tight. It takes little exploration to find the hollow place, fingers probing at it and coming away wet. Loki shivers in his grip and changes color, going blue everywhere, covered in long lines darker and raised to the touch. None of it makes him different; his transformation doesn’t bring a bulk of muscle or a burst of strength.  It is a cheap trick and nothing more.  
  
Stolen memory and instinct lead him now. He isn’t gentle in putting the other down, not like he was when he carried Betty away, trying so hard to protect her with hands more used to crushing. One hand is enough to pin Loki, hold him tight so there are no more tricks and escapes. His other hand wraps about this part of himself filled with rage and presses it to the place in Loki where he is empty.  
  
Blue flesh yields only a moment, and then, resistance. Loki fights, his emptiness barring him entrance, but Hulk is long practiced in breaking down walls. He growls and tightens his grip on the puny god, forcibly dragging him back onto hard flesh. It puts the smell of blood in the air and makes Loki scream. Hulk answers with a roar, moving in a way that he’s never had to before; a push and pull of his hips as he breaks the fight in the other man, every thrust filling Loki more.  
  
But rage is not quelled by this. He still hurts where Bruce hurts, and the good feeling of giving Loki something he deserves is not enough. Hate, for once, is not enough. Nothing seems enough. Not this tiny body merged on his, not the tears it cries or the fight it gives up. There’s supposed to be more. No root this knowledge comes from, but it comes.  
  
Another roar, and he pulls Loki on to him fully, no more half-buried thrusts. He forces space for himself in the other’s body, pleased with the warm tight reception of it.  Easier, then, just to pull and push the god as needed, up and down, nearly emptied, filled. Hulk feels another roar build, and when he lets it loose, so too does that other part of him give forth.  
  
It’s the last he knows before his time is up, strength used up and mind cast back to the shadows as Bruce returns.  


* * *

  
  
What Bruce returns to is horribly familiar. Destruction and rubble in what seems like the middle of nowhere. He lays in it, as he’s learned to do, and waits for the floating bits and pieces of memory to come back to him. In the meantime, he gets to see the sun crest slowly over the surrounding mountain range, and he wonders where he might be now.  
  
He was supposed to take a look at some sterilizing equipment at the clinic. Oh well. He surrenders the thought with a sigh and pushes himself upright. A quick look around brings up hope that is soon dashed. There are tatters of cloth strewn all about; but nothing wearable. Nothing that was even...his...  
  
He stared at the scraps of leather for long moments, mind sluggishly whirring to piece together both the familiarity and the sudden sickness he feels. Belatedly, he sees the dried blood that streaks over his stomach and hips, and something else too, dried and crusted on to him, flaking off as he stumbles about. There’s another feeling then; he’s not alone, though he usually wakes up so before having to trek miles back to civilization.  
  
“ Uhh...”  There are half-formed quips about round two at his lips as he catches sight of the most recent bane of his existence, but they die out almost instantly. Behind his eyelids are flashes of the Norse god crying out, tears spilling from red pupilled eyes. He’s forced to look at that prone body; stripped down _(but why?)_ , beat up _(from the fight)_ , and utterly wrecked.  
  
“Is this where you flicker away and pounce from behind?” Bruce tries, almost hoping for it because that at least would be familiar territory. But there is no response, no surprise attack or falling cage from the sky. Only eerie silence that discomfits him and has him reaching up to rub at the back of his own neck. What now? A call to SHIELD? _Hi.. just checking in, thought you should know there’s a hole in the ground with a crazy deity in it in Peru?_ He’d have to find a phone. Pants. People.  
  
“ I don’t suppose you’ll stay put while I...I don’t know...tell someone you’re back?” Shock is setting in, his doctor-brain tells him. The rueful chuckle is a symptom. Maybe crazy you can smell is contagious, he tells it back. Still there’s nothing but quiet all around him, and against every better instinct he has, he walks towards Loki.  
  
He’s not dead. That much is evident from the snarl on his lips when Bruce gets too close. He doesn’t move either, sparing Bruce only a momentary glare before looking up, towards the sky if Bruce had to guess. That’d be new, he thinks, a host from heaven coming down for them. Chariots instead of helicopters, definitely new. Except that long uncomfortable minutes creep by and their bashed-in mountain remains populated by just the two of them.  
  
“I’m guessing your ride home is late?” _Stop talking_ , self-preservation screams at him, but for once he ignores it, needing the silence filled. Self-preservation sees him all around a shrinking globe, and he has yet to feel safe. “ I don’t suppose you know where we are, either?”  
  
“Obviously, I’ve bested you,” comes the bitter and cold reply from the ground. “ You are now in _my_ lair, chained and muzzled and soon to carry out my every command.”  
  
“Yeah. I thought so.” Wherever they are, leaving a mad god naked and bloody in a hole in the ground isn’t an option. So Bruce extends a hand, waits out the _I don’t need help_ that doesn’t come, and sighs. It’s too much to hope that Loki will just cooperate. Part of him wants to leave him there, and then maybe a raven will come and eat his liver and he’d die of exposure. _Get a grip, Bruce_ , he tells himself, but he can’t. There’s a _GOD_ in a hole because _HIS BIG GREEN RAGE PROBLEM_ put him there. And then he sees said god...flinch.  
  
It’s enough to make his heart beat pick up the pace and hover in dangerous territory.  
  
“Have you actual memory of...last night?” Loki says oh so demurely, like sugar wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Those eyes still speak lofty heights though, making Bruce feel more a fool than nuclear physicist genius. It must be _some_ look on his face to egg Loki on. “Ah. Not a mindless beast, then. Keep your own counsel?”  
  
“Yeah. Pretty much.”  It’s gotta be a divinity thing, being able to lay naked and bloody in a hole and still talk like he’s holding court. Could definitely come in handy, Bruce thought, if he could just wave a hand about the next time he wakes from a Hulk-sized mess and make people go about their business. _Nothing to see here_.  
  
Except Loki doesn’t wave a hand about. He doesn’t move at all, except to look down on him and talk his poison. Funny how he can do that from the ground.  And Bruce wanted nothing more than to stop looking at the ruin of the creature below, but he couldn’t, because something just kept pulling his mind back, swearing he couldn’t leave, couldn’t abandon him here.  
  
Loki won’t cooperate, though, so Bruce bends down, grabs a hand and pulls. The result is not good; Loki recoils from the touch and nearly screams when he’s pulled halfway to his feet. It startles Bruce into letting go, and he cringes to watch the god fall with a pained grunt that forces Bruce to recognize what he’s been very pointedly trying not to see.  
  
Long bands of bruising around Loki’s middle, like a giant’s hand. Streaks of dried blood painted down pale thighs.  
  
“What the...“ He chokes on the words and tries to stop his brain from working. “What did..” _He_ “You...do?”  


* * *

  
  
There’s no stopping the mad laughter that bubbles past Loki’s dry and cracked lips. What _he’s_ done. He’s done what he’s always done and brought himself low. He laughs and laughs, though it makes every cracked bone and every inch of aching muscle hurt; physical pain is better than watching Banner take his time coming to understanding. He wishes the other man gone already; their business is done, and he’d like to get around to healing enough so that he may go about finding a suitable place to die.  
  
“Come on.” the man commands, and perhaps Banner is not the genius intellect that Agent Barton implied if he has still not realized that Loki cannot move.  A moment later, he forces Loki to his feet, eyes wild in their sockets, but Loki’s legs won’t hold him, and even Banner acting as a crutch doesn’t help. His legs won’t. Work. Worse, his hips are but a throbbing mass of pain, his pelvis aching with every jostle as Banner attempts to drag him along.  
  
“ I can’t.” It is surrender again. What else could it be before this man-beast that has bested him twice, each time worse than the last? Banner mutters platitudes and encouragement in a rapidly rising voice, but Loki closes his ears. Magician he may be, but his body is still flesh and blood and bone and needs time to mend before he can go sprinting about mountains again. All the human sentiment in the world will do nothing for those hurts, and Banner is too weary to carry Loki far.  
  
“ Aaugh! Why?!” Banner screams, and shout strikes true fear in Loki again, widening his eyes as the man shoves and lets him fall. “Why can’t you? You walked to containment! You walked all the way midtown to get to Asgard - or wherever the hell you came from. Why can’t you now? What did you do? _WHAT DID YOU DO?_ ”  
  
Pain. Pain interminable has him in its grip as too does the doctor. Not content to just shout, the man grabs him about the shoulders and shakes him with every demanding question. Only Loki has no answer. It’s shameful enough, what he’s been reduced to. He will not quiet the other man and his berserker beast with a tale from his silver tongue. Let him rot in his false-guilt. He simply turns his head aside and lays where he has fallen.  
  
He is not left to peace long. Once more Banner hauls him up, lifting him clean from the ground for a moment before his weight proves too much. Loki falls again, this time Banner atop him, and Loki’s mind lights in panic; he fights despite the pain it causes, hands clenched tightly into fists that hit and push and shove against the other man’s chest until he backs away and stands.  
  
“Get up, Loki.” He demands, using his name like an insult, like it will renew his strength and set him right. But the man is starting to break, and Loki can sense realization settling in, and that makes it all the worse as he wants to hide, bury himself in a hole, become invisible.  
  
And then Banner is on his knees, reaching out for Loki, touching the bruised flesh of his torso as Loki cringes away.  He’s staring, eyes wide, at Loki’s ruined and bloody flesh, and when he asks, “what is this?” Loki finds himself spewing out rage.  
  
“Why.. don’t you know? Doctor?” Loki spits, and the man’s hand jerks away.  Loki won’t look at him, but now that the hand is gone he can roll onto his hands and knees to escape and further touch.  
  
Banner is silent now, hand over mouth, and Loki smirks into the ground in which he’s curled.    


* * *

  
  
Bruce doesn’t question when clothing suddenly appears on them both.  He doesn’t question anything.  He doesn’t have space in his mind for it - or has too much, because he can’t think and thinks everything all at once.  He senses it now - the hate, the swelling, the use of flesh so unbearably tight.  It’s a battle to keep from retching.  
  
 _Why.. don’t you know? Doctor?_  And he did - he did know, he saw, remembered far more than he wanted to, as the beast inside roared pleasure and pride.  
  
He crawled away quickly, holding the contents of his stomach back only long enough to ensure he was far enough away to avoid causing more humiliation or pain.  The world swam; he had to press his forehead to the ground to keep things steady, and even then couldn’t stop the shivers that took over his muscles, chilled his skin.  
  
His fault; _his_ _fault_.  He had to pull himself together, had to help, but his mind wouldn’t form thoughts, and his body wouldn’t obey.  
  
No telling how long they remained there; long enough for Bruce to heave twice more, for Loki to hiss and laugh mirthlessly from a distance.  There was mocking, and veiled threats, but Bruce couldn’t make sense of the words, form them into meaning.  He just lay there, trying to make sense of this new horror, this monstrosity that was somehow born last night.  
  
Bruce couldn’t muster an apology.  It felt like insult, and his tongue dried in his mouth when he tried.  
  
When the shaking settled, resolve set in.  God of lies or no, Loki lay utterly broken by Bruce’s own actions, and he had to help.  He pulled himself to hands and knees and crawled slowly to Loki’s side, pausing each time Loki hisses or flinched, halting completely when those eyes whirled in barely-veiled fear.  He put out hands, offered them palms up Loki’s direction, indicating no threat.  
  
“Let me help you,” Bruce said, and his voice was choked.  “Let me...find a road, and get you help.” More hurled insults, and he deserved them every one of them, but listened when Loki informed him mortal medicine was of no use, and only shelter and rest were required.  These, Bruce could find.  These, he could provide.  He was on his feet, promising to return, and hurrying away before his thoughts were even fully formed.  
  
Mountains had caves, and sometimes - oh, blessed god yes - they had abandoned shacks, with roofs mainly intact and the remains of a cot.  It was something Bruce could work with, until a more permanent solution could be found.  
  
The sun was far higher when Bruce returned to a Loki who hadn’t moved, who hissed and groaned but kept his feet when Bruce pulled him up gently.  They took their time making it across the landscape, both exhausted by the time the shack was in sight, neither having said a word.  Bruce settled his victim on the cot, took off his magicked jacket, and rolled it for a pillow.  
  
And guarded, through the day and the night as Loki whimpered and curled in his sleep.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own! Just wanted to get this out there before I lost my nerve.

Loki wakes slowly to the feeling of motion, body moving without his direction or participation; counterpoint to the earth’s natural orbit. To the west then. Opened eyes show the world behind glass, moving faster than a horse's pace, ears filling then with the rumble of an engine as senses return to him one at a time. Sight. Sound. Scent. Taste. _Life_. There’s little in him but resignation at that last revelation, an outcome most common to the oldest dance in the universe; and he a God and a freak no less, so well built for it.  
  
“I suppose it is to Bethlehem we go.” The car lurches as he begins to speak, drawing swears and a rapid heartbeat from the man at the wheel. Loki jerks within his seat, staring down at the rough and calloused hand that comes a moment later to shield him from impact. _“Sorry! You scared me.. I didn’t know-”_ Loki doesn’t have it in him to pay attention to what the man does not know, much rathering to lose himself in the gentle cadence of his not-father’s voice thrumming in his head, lessons of old that soothe him so much more than the rambling at his side.  
  
Memory plays like drama before him, filling his barely recovered senses with the sight and sounds of his once home. The ever blowing breeze carrying upon it the scent of golden apple blossoms, sweetening the bitter truths so gravely spoken so many centuries ago. **Better taken than dead. The taken can be recovered, but never the dead. Those gone into death’s embrace become only our relics, loved and treasured but never more than bits of bone and power, never again the loved ones we once knew.** Relic. Life had not even waited for his death to make of him one. Another helping of frost giant bones kept _almost_ lovingly in depths beneath the palace. And with his time as one done now, what was it that he would become, he wondered.  
  
“ _Loki_.” The call of his name draws him from it, the idle musing, earning the harried looking scientist at his left a turn of his head. An arch of his brow. Silent question in his eyes. “You said Bethlehem. Is that a place you need to go?” He cocks the same brow higher at the question, the feeling of absurdity settling heavily over him.  
  
“Not a disciple of the White Christ, Doctor Banner? My comment would be poor announcement of your impending fatherhood then. Apologies.” Drab and bitter tones speak opposite to sorrowful words, easily betraying long established self-preservation that would otherwise tell him to comply with question and conversation and spare himself the potential wrath or punishment from his captor. What use prolonged survival for a thing as low as him? Let the other come. Better dead at his hands than trapped another moment in this ridiculous metal frame speeding to nowhere. He turns his head again as the vehicle lurches once more and this time screeches to a halt, hearing but not seeing a door thrown open and slammed shut again. There’s no helping what he sees then, Banner pacing madly afore the car, seemingly murmuring to himself. And really, what sense could he expect a half-man to have?  
  
He loses what feel like long minutes on inwards focus, reading by feel the forging of those energy-channels within that spread new webs deep in his middle and nurture what they find planted there. So far along has time and it progressed that he is not even left the soreness of the act which wrought it.  
  
“NO!” It’s a deep growl, threat and fight and monster, accompanied by trembling fists that bleed green and grow, slamming hard into the front of the car; denting there and making the whole of it jerk.  
  
The decision to act a docile hostage is forgotten in that moment, when green and green eyes lock together, Loki instantly lighting with the instinct to run. No easy feat; to get away from the monster so long used to having to chase and pin and break. All comers ran. Like Loki. Kicking at the door on his right, pulling levers and pushing, stumbling when he manages freedom at the same time that transformation from man to beast is finally complete.  
  
The car formerly at his back goes flying overhead. Rent in two. All the more reason to dodge and weave, lighting over roots and rocks, pushing himself onwards with all the speed he can muster. To where, he doesn’t know,nor does he care, as long as _where_ is far away from another thrashing. Far from the wordless rage sounding off behind him that roars and howls and sets nesting birds into panicked flight, igniting the fear of danger in all the living things that can hear it.  
  
He runs now as he did from Jotunheim’s great beast of burden upon that fateful trip, over earth that trembles and breaks with every leap from the giant, and like then, feels his heart sink into his stomach when his path ends with a deep ravine. No. No escape for him here. No stupidly shining brother crowned in blood and entrails come with his mighty hammer to save the day.  
  
He risks all then, head tipped back, voice screaming to the heavens.  
  
“ _Heim_ -!” _Open the bridge_ , he begs in his screaming mind even as his plea is cut off without completion, caught up in a tremendous grip again. Better Asgard, he thinks, with all its pomp and circumstance, with it’s armies and his false-father and his low tones of disappointment and shame for the frost giant runt playing at Prince in the golden halls of his castle. A hundred times _that_ , his silver tongue tarnished to lead or worse, Prince reduced to prisoner, if he is just spared the humiliation of this repeated thrashing.  
  
Not that he is thrashed about this time. Not yet at least. Not before the raging beast has brought them face to face, so that he feels his every panted breath as a gust of wind, warm and sour. “ **Not**. **Father**.” It speaks, low and menacing, with intentional pauses that terrify despite the lack of understanding them. Enormous are eyes narrowed tight. The words an obvious poison upon the monster’s tongue. Loki hasn’t an answer to the warning. Not father? No, mayhaps not if he squeezes much tighter for much longer. That would certainly remedy the matter. Another squeeze, a gush of blood, the end of the life planted within.  
  
What comes is worse. Better. Yet worse. Perhaps even a return to home. To Valhalla at least, if not the palace proper, where he can sleep away the day and eat the endless feast at night.  
  


* * *

  
  
Fatherhood. The word falls down hard into the depths of Banner, where he resides, where _he_ hears and casts aside the ununderstood - _hood_ and hears only Father echo over and over.  
  
No.  
  
Not father. Not ever again. No more belts and fists and shouts. No more tearing and poking and prodding. Never again a late night false embrace that is anything but kind; that hurts in shameful places and leaves a lingering ache all the day long.  He won’t allow. He won’t let happen again. Not now. Not ever. Never never never again. No matter how Bruce fights him for control, no matter the pithy ideas he has about _companionship_ and _only_ and _loneliness_. No. No. **NO**. Not father! Never ever! He will make it go away even if he has to tear his way out of Bruce and into the world proper.  
  
“Not father! NEVER FATHER! NEVER!” Hulk insists, every spit out word enraging him further, until he’s beating the captured god in his hand repeatedly into the forest floor. Every impact leaves a crater, the formations inspiring creativity in the beast until he’s pounding over and over in precisely the same spot, deepening it rather than forming a multitude of shallow holes. Again. Again and again. And again. Until it is deep. Deep enough to put _father_ in. To keep him from rising again. From hurting. Until he’s gone gone gone and can never come back. It’s not enough just to put him down in it, Hulk buries him, grabbing up handful after handful of loosened dirt and rocks and covering up the broken thing calling itself _god_ with it. Until he can’t be seen. Until he can’t be heard drawing rattling breath anymore. Until he is _gone_.  
  
And then it is time to be gone himself, carrying Banner far far away from this place. As far as he can get them while he has both the fore and the strength; that thing so easily spent once his rage is quelled. He carries them to where Bruce and all his good intentions can not dig up their mistake again. Where he can not decide to do kindness to it and chain it to them the way he did father. Always cleaning up after him. Always taking care of. Until Hulk had reached through the weakened Bruce himself and put daddy under the earth too.  
  
For maximum distance, he leaps and leaps again, putting that little patch of disturbed ground behind himself, until he has reached the darkness of night time, weary, and leaps become lumbering steps up the sides of endless mountains, desolate places, places for solitude. Before darkness takes him again, he gets them to a place with water nearby. Bruce will be alright there. Not thirsty. Not hungry either, if he’s creative.  
  
Then, he too is gone.  
  


* * *

  
  
This time when Bruce wakes there is no confusion. No pleasant blur of missing memories to try and recapture. What’s in mind is a lingering and long familiar frustration. Anger that he safely rides and points at himself, though baffled, questioning just _exactly_ how it is that he’s never met an IQ test he couldn’t blow through like a third grade multiple choice exam on bees, and yet spawn from himself so dumb a creature that it can not even understand the thoughts and concepts born within.  
  
 _Not_ father, he bitterly thinks inwards. Not a man stumbled into death already in some dark alley at the hands of all too rampant muggers. Father _hood_. Impending. Another spawning, a thing he thought impossible. More than thought. _Knew_. Had seen the endless pages of his printed DNA himself, broken helixes that could no longer be called human, and had even then breathed relief that he could never again pass down the curse of genius and madness.  
  
And yet.. He _has_ to know.  
  
At least this time he’s been left his pants, if not his shirt. Never his shirt. Stupid explosion of exaggerated muscle that leaves him a naked and weak wreck when it is gone away. Whatever. He’ll steal one from the first laundry line he finds. As he often does. Thanking god all the while for his magnanimity in allowing for these countries too poor for the luxuries of modern laundry, indoor washers and driers that leave him naked too often if he’s caught in the states or other similarly developed nations. Long live petty dictators and shitty presidents, pretending democrats because the America tells them to be and puts them down if they’re not. They provide all the ill-fitting shirts and shoes he needs.  
  
NOT GO BACK, rumbles the thought from deep in his belly. More smug than it has any right to be. NEVER FIND. Ha. Good old simpleton Hulk. Can always be counted on for a chuckle or three.  
  
 _Noo_.. he directs right back, inner voice dripping in sarcasm that is likely lost and wasted on that inferior intellect. _How could I ever trace the steps of a two-thousand pound big-foot frolicking along unbeaten paths_. Never find, his ass. Any ability of going incognito most certainly did not belong to the lumbering nine-foot giant. Green giant. With a radiation signature readable from space. Never find indeed. Stupid other guy. He has to find. To dig up what was buried and learn for himself if what was claimed was really true, or if the Deceiver God lives up to his title. His stomach churns at just the thoughts that spring, the necessary tests, the horrifying possibility.. all of it enough to stave off guilt for a while yet, crushing emotion that speaks of responsibility he has no room for. No ability to answer.

 

 

 


End file.
